nicky deeley

>>In the studio<<

Image from ‘God Ant Walking’ costumed performance (2016) to be included in AMBIT magazine Issue 235
Launched at the Writers Centre Norwich and Tate Modern. 

Our photo story for the Fetish Issue 2 of feminist horror magazine Suspira
the photo story was awarded by Creative Magazine as Best in Book for 2018.

Interview with photographer Lydia Whitmore here 

Showing with INGRESS
‘Ecstasy in Norwich’
Juliette Blightman
Benedict Drew
Kira Freije
INGRESS (Laura Bygrave, Nicky Deeley and Karis Upton) 
Bea McMahon
Jeremy Millar
Erica Scourti
Tai Shani
Anna Townley.

LowerGreen, Anglia Square,
Curated by Jonathan P Watts and
Henry Jackson Newcombe.

Showing as part of the INGRESS collective 
with other core members 
Laura Bygrave, Karis Upton.
Part of Artlicks Weekend 2018
‘Peripheries’
with guests Alicia Rodriguez and Uma Breakdown. 
Supported by Arts Council UK funding.

Set design for photographer
Lydia Whitmore
and Suspira Magazine, Issue 2 
‘Fetish’.
Shot on location in the Entamology Dept of Manchester Natural History Museum.
https://www.suspiramagazine.com/

Waikato Museum, in New Zealand 
has acquired an early sculpture,
‘Two Buildings and a Squirrel Drama’ 
into their collection. 

Included in the publication of curator
Jes Fernie, celebrating 10 years of her projects. 

http://jesfernie.com

Am commissioned as part of Castell 03

Castell 03 returns this year with the thematic focus ‘To the Sea’ to coincide with Cymru Wales’ 2018 Year of the Sea. STAMP is part of the Arts Council of Wales Ideas, People, Places (IPP) arts-led regeneration Programme. Led by Gwynedd Council in partnership with Galeri, CADW and Communities First, the programme encompasses creative project work with a number of community groups, artists and organisations across the area.

Castell 03 is led by artist Manon Awst, who will coordinate between 8 and 10 site-specific projects leading up to a week of events and exhibitions between 15 – 24 June 2018.

Show with Bruce Ingram
to develop an exhibition around our shared interest in ikebana. 
First development phase will be making work together in the 
NunnsYard Gallery, Norwich, 
in August 2018. 
(image credit; Bruce Ingram)

‘The Temporary Research Centre for Stories, Myths, Tales and Fables’ fourth edition has been invited by 
Savourr Events in Norwich. 

SAVORR is a non-profit arts organisation based in Norwich, with no fixed gallery space or location.

Since founding in 2011, SAVORR has worked with over 100 artists from the UK and internationally in 13 exhibitions that have transformed disused buildings to cultivate the local art scene, run an events programme and commissioned new artworks from emerging voices shaping the contemporary art scene.

Hosted by Jurnets Crypt Members Club. 

Winter residency @studiowildern, in Norfolk. Mermaid Purse Flag, experimenting how to show work outdoors.

On going drawing series-  drawing everyday. 
Imagining a future ocean. Seaslugs and Nudibranches. 
Watercolour on A4. 

‘Orfolk Egg’ sculptural edition now being stocked by Fairhurst Gallery in Norwich. 
Alongside works by Bruce Ingram, NIna Folwer and Bella Singleton. 

I have been working on a range of sculptural editions. You can see them here. 
Jesmonite, pigments, brass, cord. 
Each 2.2 kilo, 250mm high.
Each unique. 

Solo exhibition at Anteros Arts, Norwich. 

An ecosystem of kabuki, north Norfolk marshes, jungles, the botanical drawings of Barbara Everard, geological strata, frogs, talismans, puppets, folk festivals, evolutionary timeline graphs and ikebana.

Gallery images coming soon…. 

November 28- December 9, 2017

‘The Temporary Research Centre for Stories, Myths, Tales and Fables’ third edition has been invited by @bosse_and_baum to accomany the exhibition by Candida Powell Williams.

Saturday 11 March, 1-5pm.

Visitors to the research centre are invited to explore the work of Candida Powell Williams and use the objects on display as stimulus to remember stories they may have heard in the past; or maybe to make up new tales as they go. 

Cley Contemporary
July 2017.

A collaborative costumed performance work with Rob Bellman, which will take place in the marshes of Cley,
North Norfolk. 

‘In the darkness they swing their manes like pendulums’. 
Barber Surgeons Park, London Wall, 
Wednesday, 2nd November, 8.30pm- 9pm. 
A new performance work commissioned by the Museum of London as part of its ‘Night Museum’ season and independent curator Jes Fernie. 
With live drums and percussion by Tazelaar Stevenson.

LIVE ART IN WYNDMONHAM
NORFOLK. 
27th AUGUST
Curated by Chinasa Ezugha
with;
Jasmine Loveys
Charlie Barlow
Weeks and Wilford
Nicky Deeley
Sheaf and Barley

‘The Temporary Research Centre for Stories, Myth and Fables”
Will be representing OUTPOST gallery at the upcoming Wysing Polyphonic Music Festival at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge on 2nd July. 

Exploring the nature and themes of stories and how they are remembered, told, and passed on. Festival goers are invited to join the artists in their research hub and, with the help of props and toys, regale their own stories and anecdotes of folklore and mystery. Each story will be gathered into the artists growing research collection. With Mark Scott Wood.

‘Folk Horror Revival Field Studies’. 
Wyrd Harvest Press. 

Print editions made with First Site Associates x 150
Ten pieces from each artist. 

(thinking about)

The

Age of Man.

Age of Fishes. 

Age of Invertebrates. 

-Ernst Haeckel.

‘PROCESSION’
Collaborative performance work made with musicians
Taz Stephenson and
Mike Page. 

A procession of volunteers walking with banners or playing brass or percussion.
Led through Norwich city centre by bandleader Taz, ‘Procession’ culminated in an experimental synth performance by Mike Page. 

Commissioned by Outpost Gallery as part of group exhibition
‘The Community’, curated by Marta Berjermo.

Horse Shoe Crab.

Banner from a new series of fabric based works. 
Dye, pigment, thread on fabric. 

‘The Temporary Research Centre for Stories, Myth and Fables”

16- 17 April, Barbican Arts Trust BlackHorse Road Studios, London. 
With Mark Scott Wood.

A weekend experimenting with new way of researching folklore by constructing an environment for the public to tell us stories.

Among the rich material we gathered were stories of mistaken owl identities, things that teenagers leave in forests, encounters with the Beast of Bodmin, south Devon lucky architectural features, cats in walls, haunted lakes, death in the rearview mirror, headless horsemen, frenzied highwaymen, The Lady from The Big House, the differences between witches and wizards and the BOO HAG. 

Four day artist retreat to Hunstanton Lighthouse, in North Norfolk with the First Site Associates. 

22 – 28 February 2016. 
Associates week long residency, encompassing the whole building of First Site as a work/performance space. 

Two day artist writing course and editing workshop with Ackerman and Daly and First Site Associates. 

First Site Associates travelled to visit the Venice Biennale. 

First Site Associates met with artist Katrina Palmer, who spoke about her practice, and together we discussed ideas around performance, the writing process, editing, sound, and construction and layering of narratives which mix the imagination with historical fact. (image:ArtAngel)

First Site Associates travelled to Bristol to visit Spike Island gallery and studios.

INCUNABULA

25 Contemporary artists respond to Norwich Cathedral’s Historic Library

Opening 25^th August, 6.30-8pm

Exhibition 26^th August – 6^th September

Incunabula is a wonderfully rich exhibition in the Historic Library at Norwich Cathedral. In the long medieval room in the cloisters, which will continue to function as a place of study throughout the exhibition, twenty-five artists have responded to an open call with new site-specific work and existing objects. A huge range sculpture, video, sound, performance, painting and text, will occupy the bays, shelves, tables and chairs of the library with an exciting response to medievalism, contemplation, narrative, feminism and magic.

The library will also display books from its collection such as the Norwich Doomsday (a beautiful medieval illuminated manuscript) several ‘incunabula’ (early printed texts, including the Nuremberg Chronicle – a lavishly illustrated history of the world) and a 1549 copy of Tyndale’s New Testament. Norwich as a city has a long history of a love of books and words. It was the home of the first known woman to write a book in the English language (Julian of Norwich in 1395) when she wrote down a series of mystical visions. The first poem in blank verse was written here by Henry Howard, in the 16^th Century. The first provincial library was also built here in 1608, and the first newspaper printed in 1701, and it was also the first city to implement the Public Library Act of 1850.

There will be a roundtable discussion in conjunction with the exhibition on 26^th August at 2pm, titled ‘Representing the past for a political now: medievalism, narrative, and dissatisfaction with the future’. All are welcome to attend and we welcome further submissions for five-minute presentations in any format.

Incunabula has been curated by Christopher Minchin (Norwich Cathedral Artist in Residence) with Gudrun Warren (Norwich Cathedral Librarian and Curator).

‘Dreamtime’ by John Moriarty. 
(Lilliput Press, Ireland). 

Associates meeting on a sunny Saturday at TAP gallery in Southend.

‘Solution 9, The Great Pyramid’ 
Ingo Niermann and Jens Thiel (Eds).
Stenberg Press.

- What if we designed a gigantic pyramid in Eastern Germany filled with the cremated ashes of every human? 
(thegreatpyramid.de)

Am super pleased to be selected for
‘Inculabula’
A group exhibition curated by artist in resident Christopher Minchin, and artists Anna Brass and Alida Sayer.

Norwich Cathedral.
Friday 28th-Monday 31st August

Solo research trip funded by the First Site Associates Program,  to Dublin, Ireland to visit ArtBox Gallery, where I will be showing in 2016, and also to visit the anthropocene based show, ‘The Riddle of the Burial Grounds’ curated by Tessa Giblin at the Project Arts Centre, draw at the National History Museum ( nicknamed the DEAD ZOO locally), and also visit the Douglas Hyde Gallery. 

The wonderful wonderful Margaret Atwood, and ‘In Other Worlds- essays 
on science fiction and the human imagination’.

Atwood has always challenged the use of the term science fiction and tends to use ‘speculative futures’ instead, as her writing is rooted in robust, existing scientific and cultural research. 

Associates group research; 
we are working through the wonderful text ‘End Matter’ by Katrina Palmer, made in association with Art Angel and BBC Radio4, and are looking forward to a discussion/ workshop with Katrina later this year. 

As a participant in the First Site Associates program for 2015/2106, we attend selected events which influence our research and our practice.
We attended the  ‘FOLDS IN TIME’ conference at The Freud Museum, in which speakers reflected on imagination and the uncanny. 
The speakers included;
Patricia Allmer
Rachel Anderson (Artangel) 
Brass Art
Rebecca Fortnum
Pavel Pyś
Alison Rowley
Lindsay Seers
Daniel Silver
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Rachel Withers.

Finally edited the performance footage from 2013 Catlin exhibition. 
Watch the film here.

Research Reading; ‘Ritual’,  David Pinner, (1967).

More new drawings.

Research Reading: ‘The Midwitch Cuckoos’, John Wyndham (1957).

I have been selected as a 2015/2016 Associate Artist for First Site Gallery in Colchester. A year long research and bursary travel program for 7 artists based in the East of England and throughout the year includes.

-Regular meetings with invited speakers and debate focused on current practice
-Professional development seminars
-Individual research bursaries to further an aspect of their practice
-A residency at Firstsite
-A group retreat
-Public-facing outcomes (events/ publications etc.)
-Research trips (national and international)
-Peer to peer activities in collaboration with Firstsite’s Associate Makers and Learning Associates.

Alongside; 

Lisa Wilkens, Cambridge
Cinzia Cremona, Colchester
James Stradner, Bury St Edmunds
Amy McKenny, Southend
Nastassja Simensky, Southend 

Research Reading; 
‘The Mind in the Cave, Consciousness and the Origins of Art’,
David Lewis- Williams, (2002).

A taster of a new drawing series;
“The Battle Ready Soldiers”

all A1, watercolour and pencil on paper. 

Research Reading; ‘Kanaval, Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti’, Leah Gordon. (2010).

ANLAR TV- an Irish TV channel screened my ‘Lismore’ film over the Christmas 2014 period, as part of its festive programming. 

I have been invited by curator Hilary Murray to be part of the the program for ‘ArtBox’, a new Dublin based gallery. 

It will be a show which follows the theme of the March exhibition Dead Zoo, which investigates the human attraction to ‘becoming’ animal, and scheduled for May 2016. 

‘LISMORE’, the film I made is available to view.

And here is the ‘behind the scenes’ making of.